International banking: ‘Swiss will be forced to give up secrecy’

GENEVA: Switzerland will likely have no choice but to give up its cherished bank secrecy practices amid mounting international pressure to fight tax evasion, a top scholar of banking law said in an interview published on Saturday.

“I doubt that Switzerland can avoid it,” Luc Thevenoz, head of Geneva’s Centre for Banking and Financial Law, told Le Temps daily, while referring to the automatic exchange of banking data with foreign tax authorities. In Switzerland, banking secrecy has for decades been seen as an immutable practice aimed at privacy protection, in the same way as medical confidentiality.

Although the Alpine country has recently cracked down on undeclared funds in a bid to clear its reputation as a tax haven, it has so far stubbornly refused to consider allowing the automatic exchange of banking information. Thevenoz warned that if the country dragged its feet before changing course, it risked landing on tax haven blacklists, as happened in 2009.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 21^st, 2013.

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